


Family Matters

by jeta



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton Whump, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional carnage, Follows the main arc of the movies but not closely, Gen, Hostage Situations, Hurt Tony Stark, NO character deaths, Playing with chronology a little bit, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Profanity, Protective Steve, Protective Tony Stark, Rotating POV, Tony Stark-centric, Updates on Mondays and Thursdays, Violence, alien attacks, dont worry about it, entire team, i swear there is a plausible timeline, inconsistent laryngitis, overwritten, randomly, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeta/pseuds/jeta
Summary: “Face it, we suck as a team," said Iron Man. "You and I do, I mean.”Steve struggled to articulate anything at all, and Tony took advantage of his silence.“So, effective immediately, I’m quitting the Avengers,” continued Iron Man, lifting his helmet and revealing a rather-banged-up-looking Tony Stark. His eyes were tired. His face was white where it wasn't caked in dried blood. Without his helmet, his real voice sounded thin and hoarse, like he hadn't used it in ages, almost inaudible.“...Tell the others I wish them all well. No hard feelings. Good luck, Captain Rogers. And goodbye.”[TAKES PLACE SHORTLY AFTER CIVIL WAR]Rated H for Hiatus.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May 21st, 4:22pm

Steve came to during what he immediately recognized as a patented, full-throttle, metal-toned Iron Man monologue.

“...circumstances being what they were, it was easiest for me just to cut a deal with Secretary Ross. But then it came to my attention that there’s just, you know, there’s definitely something deeply pointless about self-flagellation, and yet on the other hand, there’s something very dyspeptic about using the same tactics for eight or nine years in a row, with few if any real outwards signs of improvement. I mean, what a waste. What a goddamn waste.”

Steve blinked slowly, trying to orient himself to both the speech and the situation.

The room was empty, but for the two of them. No, wait, not room -- quinjet. When had they gotten back to the quinjet? Last thing Steve remembered was being yelled at by Clint to duck, then being impacted by the alien’s telekinetic powers, and then being blown over the side of the cliff… which had been directly over a smallish lake, but his clothes weren’t wet (just a little blood-stained), so Iron Man must have caught him before he hit the water…

He wasn’t seriously injured, aside from the hole in his shoulder where he’d been shot by the terrorists, and the two or three ribs that the terrorists had broken when they had ganged up on him twelve to one. Steve felt exhaustion, but only mild discomfort -- he’d walked off worse than this. But then, the lack of any real pain meant Tony had to have stuck some drugs in him while he was out. That would also account for the general confusion he was experiencing...

His brain’s sluggish response time was frustrating as hell. Iron Man was still talking, and Steve couldn’t for the life of him figure out what about. But how… Tony hadn’t been in the fight. He hadn’t even been anywhere near it. He’d been in Thailand for a green energy conference. All the Rogue Avengers had been in Spain, destroying a Hydra splinter group who had taken hostages, one of whom had turned out to be an alien being with crazy-strong telekinesis...

When… how…

Steve struggled to articulate anything at all, and Tony took advantage.

“Bottom line is, I’m too emotionally involved in things that only give me a very low payout. And I mean payout very strictly financially. The world may need the Avengers, but not with both you and me at the center. That’s obviously been…less than ideal. Face it, we suck as a team. You and I do, I mean.”

...He was being purposely confusing, and purposely insulting, Steve realized dimly, still struggling to gather his wits. A Tony-Stark hallmark… a clear signal that Tony was…

Steve couldn’t remember, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation yet.

“So, effective immediately, I’m quitting the Avengers,” continued Iron Man.

Instinctively, Steve lurched forward.

Tony drew back. He hit a catch on his face-plate, and the helmet released. He immediately swung a pair or expensive sunglasses on, although not before Steve caught a glimpse of a major laceration over his left eyebrow, which had caused a steady stream of blood to pool in his eye and run down his cheek. “Don’t stress,” said Iron Man. “It’s the best alternative to a Happily Ever After. The Avengers will still have full funding. You’ll always have full use of the upstate facility. Call me any time. If you need… a consultation, let’s call it. Phone only. In person would be, well, awkward.”

“T-Tony,” Steve finally managed to croak, throat bone dry, scratching painfully over the name.

Tony drew his helmet from his head. He set it next to Steve, next to--

The Vibranium Shield.

Steve’s heartbeat sped up.

Tony rapped the shield lightly with a couple of iron-shod fingers. Smirked for a split second. “All yours,” he said. Without his helmet, his voice sounded thin and hoarse, like he hadn't used it in ages, and his next words were almost inaudible. “Tell the others I wish them all well. No hard feelings. Good luck, Captain Rogers. And goodbye.”

“Tony, stop--”

Steve erupted into a fit of dry coughing, and once again, Tony took advantage of the moment to turn his back, exit the quinjet, and abruptly rocket out of sight.


	2. 47 Minutes Earlier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May 21st, 3:35pm

47 MINUTES EARLIER:

Breakfast was completely ruined, and Clint was beyond annoyed about it. He put Rubio on hold and cradled the burner phone next to his bad ear. He’d just barely finished heating up some instant oatmeal in the quinjet's microwave and fished some creepy-looking old OJ out of the fridge to tide him over until dinner. Which, for normal people, would be in a couple of hours or so, around 6:00pm.

For a moment, Clint indulged himself and started to wax nostalgic about what it had been like to eat breakfast in the morning, and eat dinner at 6:00pm.

Not a lot of time to eat on a regular schedule, when your every day was packed with shutting down smuggling rings that had gotten their hands on some loose vibranium, negotiating the release of underage hostages, and being hunted down by hostile governments the world over. He had been smack-dab in the middle of threatening to blow up the weapons cache full of alien tech when his stomach started to growl, and when Clint's stomach growled, Clint obeyed. He had already eaten a banana and would have been halfway through his instant oatmeal by now if he hadn't noticed Natasha's selfie flashing insistently on his personal cell phone.

He pressed accept and put her on speaker.

“Just so you know, Tony’s in there too, so don’t blow up the building yet.”

Clint was so surprised, he dropped his orange juice to the quinjet floor.

_…Motherfucker._

"In where?" he said, mopping up the mess with a nearby tee-shirt. One of Sam's. Oops. _Sorry, Sam_. "In the storage locker with the vibranium, or in the warehouse with the hostages?"

"He's in the storage locker, with two hostages."

“What the fuck!” Clint groaned. "Cap said he was in Thailand!"

“Nope,” said Natasha. “Seven hostages total, besides Tony.”

 _Huh_? 

“I thought there were four?”

“Four of them children. Six total. One other who seems to have come with Tony. Two of the children were with Tony in the storage locker, but it looks like they moved them out to keep them with the other three. They're with the twelve terrorists in the warehouse."

Clint scrunched his nose. His mental math abilities were not top notch, at the moment, given he'd only slept two hours in the last two days. "Wait...how many?"

"Plus, there's one weird hostage that keeps going in and out on the scans, something malfunctioning with the scanner. Bucky wants to double-check Redwing’s internals to make sure the scans aren’t flawed, but Sam is pretty sure it's seven total.”

"And you're heading towards the smugglers, by now?" asked Clint, struggling to find a clean spoon for his oatmeal. Even all the forks were dirty.

"I'm still with the terrorists," said Nat, sounding about as annoyed as Clint felt. "We keep getting delayed. Police are outside, but Steve's about to go in, Sam with him. I have eyes on the four other kids, all but the weird one."

"Where's Bucky?"

"In sigma position."

“ _Fuck_ ,” muttered Clint. Seven and a half hostages total, then, if his math was right, and three of them now  _his_ responsibility... Three hostages, one of whom was a grown man and should have been in Thailand minding his own damn business. Literally.

"He needs to mind his own damn business, literally!" Clint said excitedly to Nat.

He was not one to waste an opportunity for a pun.

"Clint, please focus."

Well... she was probably laughing on the inside, though.

"Agh," he whined, "Whatever." Turning his attention back to the phone-line he had open with the smugglers, who had been on hold while he'd been negotiating with the terrorists in the warehouse, but who would no doubt be helping the terrorists blow up the museum later on today, if they couldn't cut a better deal first, but would more likely than not to switch allies if Clint put enough money on the table, he barked:

“Okay, you idiots, when were you gonna inform me that Tony Stark is inside the storage locker with you? Do you _want_ to die slowly as I feed you piece by piece to a garbage disposal?”

( _Tactful,_ he heard Natasha mutter softly at the end of the other line).

Clint didn't care. “Put him on the phone with me, right now," he said, searching the quinjet kitchenette for just one clean spoon, goddammit. Was that too much to ask?  

There was a sort of scrambling on the other line, but no replies.

A single spoon lay in the sink, but it was encrusted with some strange-looking green sediment...

Some more rasping, on Rubio's end.

Could nobody do dishes around here...??

Someone young and scared-sounding started shouting on the end of Natasha's call, snapping Clint back to attention.

"I swear to God," he continued, growing even more irritated as he was forced to resort to drinking his oatmeal. "I’ve got missiles trained on you from four locations. You’re dead unless I hear his voice—”

“He IS on the phone, already,” replied the lead smuggler, a man named Rubio, who Clint had been talking to for the last fourteen minutes before Nat's call. “He’s been sick. He lost his voice.”

Clint laughed out loud. “That’s gerbil crap!”

“Truly! Listen!”

…There was a very thin, sort of rasping cough that could, maybe, possibly have been Tony Stark.

“Huh!” Clint said, pondering the slimness of the possibility that he was being told the actual truth, for once in his life. “For real?”

“Verdad!”

Rubio sounded pretty sincere.

“Oh, fuck it,” groaned Clint, and he meant it, too. The negotiations, the Avengers Initiative, the whole world, and breakfast. Tony Stark had officially ruined everything, including breakfast. He had a lot to answer for. Clint stuffed the rest of his oatmeal in his mouth, burning his throat, took a last bite of his second banana (winding up with more peel than berry), put the quinjet on auto-land, grabbed a parachute, and stuck a spare pistol into his shoulder holster. “Well, damn. That means I have to come inside, pendejo.”

"Por favor," said Rubio urgently. "We can't take him any longer..."

"Yeah," grunted Clint as he opened the hatch to jump out of the quinjet, not remotely looking forward to his impending reunion with his former closest friend who happened to be a billionaire. "I know the feeling."


	3. Six Days Earlier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May 15th, 2:05pm

Six Days Ago:

 

_ Figure... out… next...move.  _

Too groggy. 

_ Decision. Plan. Action.  _

Some distant, squishy part of his brain sent command after command. But nothing responded. 

_ Thought process of ANY kind. Wake up, you moron.. get it together, Stark.  _

...Still nothing. 

Nada. 

Zilch. 

_ Need input. Need data. Get going.  _

Keeping his eyes shut helped not at all. He forced himself to open them. Really he only did it to see if there was a way to wrap up in a nearby blanket, stop his uncontrollable shivering. He felt searing white pain all through his head as soon as he did. And he really didn’t like what he saw. 

_...OHHH crap. _

It was  _ a _ thought, at least. It just wasn’t very helpful one. 

_ Face facts, Stark.  _

Steeled himself again. Felt around his wrist for his Iron Man bracelet. Missing. Oh, shit. Squished his eyes shut. Then steeled himself for a third time and squinted his eyes back open. 

...Metal ring around his left ankle. Bolted to a grate nearby. Sitting hunched over in a couple inches of disgusting green-brown water. He was indoors, probably below ground. Sunken-down area of confinement, tiled but covered in grime and mud, like someone had dug just enough space for a shallow grave, and dumped all the dirt into the empty hot tub where he lay. Then turned on the tap. About half a foot of water sloshing around in the base of the tiled pit. There was a spigot overhead, about ten feet above. Chain around his ankle connected to the half-obscured grate or gutter at the bottom of the cesspit. Grate didn’t seem to be draining water all too well. There was a rodent screeching somewhere far too close by, or possibly a couple of rodents. 

All around, very medieval-looking and nasty-looking captivity location. 

Tony looked up, flinching against the painful creak in his left shoulder as he shifted his weight (still hadn't finished healing, although Germany had happened months ago...). Only light source in the room came from… a dim blue light from a computer screen, on a desk up above the lid of the pit. 

( _ Pit has a lid, not good not good not good _ ). 

His view of the computer screen was blocked by someone’s back. Familiar silhouette, but not immediately placeable. Familiar voice, too, although the fog in his brain made it next to impossible to sort through all the people he had wronged hard enough for them to place him in a hot tub pit full of sewer water and rats, with his foot chained to the bottom. 

“Oh, Tones…” the voice sighed. “What a mess. What a pickle.”

Tony groaned so hard he thought he might throw up. 

“Killian,” he rasped, his throat protesting already. Dammit. Laryngitis. He’d forgotten about it. Bad case. Had been with him three weeks. Longer than his last desperate fling, actually (he  _ hated _ being broken up with Pepper). 

“You are something else, you know that?” remarked Killian from the computer. Still hadn’t turned to face Tony, but Tony would know his voice anywhere. Tony tried to clear his throat and ended up in a harsh fit of coughing. He concluded it as valiantly as he could as Killian slowly rotated his desk chair until he was able to look down at Tony from over his shoulder. 

“Hi there,” grinned Killian. 

Tony narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know why, but I had you marked down as  _ deceased _ in my personal scrapbook of people I hate more than going to the dentist,” he muttered to his old enemy, his voice cracking and scraping over every word. 

“Administrative mistake, probably,” said Killian, widening his lazy, rage-inducingly smug grin. “Sure looks like you could do with a decent secretary.”

Tony lunged like an animal. 

“Don’t you even think ab—“

“I’m not,” said Killian over Tony’s resumed coughing. “I’m really not. Honest. Pepper’s great and all, but I’ve got larger prey on my radar…” He swiveled all the way around in the chair and cracked open a soda. Looked like Fanta. “Peter’s really something, isn’t he?”

Tony’s blood froze as his coughing lulled and he finally caught sight of the image on Killian’s computer screen. It was a Facebook page...it was —

“Don’t you  _ dare  _ even—“

“You’re in no position to bargain, let alone make threats,” interrupted Killian menacingly. He rose from the desk chair and turned a tap. The spigot above where Tony was sitting choked out a trickling stream, and then a large tumble. Water so cold it was almost ice poured down into the pit, directly onto Tony’s head. He gasped and scrambled to change his position, but the chain connecting his ankle to the grate barely allowed him any room to re-position himself, and his shoulder protested any change of angle at all. 

“There’s no negotiation this time; no fabulous job offer, and nothing you can give me,” continued Killian, chuckling like a maniac. “There’s just a slow, painful death ahead for you, complete with the certain knowledge of what I’m gonna do to everyone you care about.” He rapped his knuckles against the computer screen. “Starting with him.”

Tony spluttered weakly, unable to breathe—this was a nightmare, surely—his hands were shaking and his lungs were burning for air and he could feel his panic subsuming everything—

“It’s time to go,” said a new voice from the doorway. Another familiar one; this time Tony knew it at once, even through his panic. 

“Zemo!” he shouted, spluttering as water streamed into his mouth. “Whatever he’s doing for you, I’ll do it better—“

The spigot shut off. 

Tony blinked water out of his eyes, surprised (and alarmed) that that had worked. 

“I wish you could, Mr. Stark,” Helmut Zemo said quietly, extending his arm to Killian. A glimpse of silver flashed in the exchange. Iron Man bracelet, almost certainly. Great. 

“Thanks, again, Tony, for the...motivation...” said Killian as he flicked his wrist at Tony and turned to leave the room. Pieces of the Iron Man suit flew towards him as he did, assembling itself around Killian’s body. “Peter Parker is clearly your legacy, your pride and joy. It’ll be a delight to tear him apart limb by limb, and it’ll be even more wonderful doing it while dressed as Iron Man. Funny. I somehow always seem to do my best work when I’m ruining yours…”

No. Killian was bluffing. Peter was safe in New York, and if he needed protecting, then Steve and the others would protect him. They had to. They had to…


	4. Four Days Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 17th, 5:34pm

Peter’s panicked yell cut through the evening street traffic like a knife through water. 

“Gahgh!!!”

He threw bolt after bolt of webbing at the ground. He was drawing way too much attention to himself, seeing as how he was dressed in red and blue spandex and flinging webbing at concrete, but needs must. 

“It’s too fast!” shrieked his companion. 

“Go left, I’ll go right!”

“I  _ am  _ going left!”

“Then go to the other left! High!! Higher!! Freaking hell!! I said go high!!!!”

They were both freaking out, madcore. 

“Get it!” shrieked Wanda, dancing a short sort of flamenco dance step as the cockroach they’d both been firing at made a beeline for her Keds. “Oh my God!!”

“I’m trying! I’m trying!”

It was hard to concentrate with Wanda throwing red energy bolts all over the sidewalk, imploding the very slab Peter was standing on. 

Suddenly, like a freaking deus ex machina (AP English Lit text last week; Peter had been very ready), a booted foot came out of the clear blue air and crunched down on the insect. Hard. 

“Wanda,” said the boot’s owner nonchalantly, “When, where, why and how did you manage to find motherfreakin’ Spider-Man, of all people, here, in Spain, on this fine summer’s day? And also, how many cucarachas were you two planning to kill alone before notifying the rest of us of his presence?”

Wanda panted for breath, shrugged at the new man innocently, and subtly edged behind Peter for protection. Peter tried to act cool and also-nonchalant. 

“Hey, there, Hawkeye. Agent Clint, that is. I mean Agent Hawkeye—“

“Barton and Romanov will do fine,” replied the ice-blonde woman who was currently sipping on an iced tea in a patio chair behind Wanda, before Peter could splutter out a correction. “He’s not really an agent anymore, and I’m retiring.”

“That right there is just what they  _ want  _ you to think,” murmured Wanda teasingly, wrapping her now-unglowing fingers around Peter’s spider-suited shoulder. “Only someone who is still a secret agent would insist that they’re no longer a secret agent.”

“Don’t jeopardize the mission,” snapped Barton. “You honestly really are in trouble, Wanda”

“Oh, I’m so scared,” she said energetically, with an inscrutable lack of sarcasm.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said automatically, which he pretty much always did after someone said the T-word to or around him. “Sorry. Sorry. I just, uh, well, I came here for a school trip—“

“No,” said Romanov. 

“Sort of, well, I have relatives in this town—“

“Nope,” said Barton.

“And they’re always telling me I have to come over and see the fantastic late-medieval architecture—“

“Nope,” said the other three together, Wanda’s nose crunching in as she started laughing. 

“Okay fine! I’m here because Happy let it slip that some stuff was going down and maybe I should try to investigate.”

Barton shot a split-second look at Romanov. “Happy told you that?”

“Uh, well.”

“Or Happy’s confidential reports to Tony told you that,” clarified Romanov. “The ones marked  _ highly classified _ and protected by several layers of bespoke antivirus software?”

“Well, yeah,” shrugged Peter. “Kinda.” He didn’t like her tone. It wasn’t exactly illegal hacking if Happy had left the tablet in nearly-full view in the between-seat pedestal when he came to pick Peter from school two days ago for their last-day-of-April-2019-and-then-Aunt-May-is-off-to-the-Bahamas-for-ten-day’s-with-her-girlfriends celebration party. The three of them had gone to a Mets game and then out to a local bar afterward. Peter had been so stoked to walk in with Happy and May, and when he’d been carded, Happy had said,  _ don’t worry about it _ to the guy checking ID’s, and the guy hadn't worried about him, and May had bought him his first beer as a symbol of how much she trusted him, and for getting a B- in ceramics, which was by far his hardest class last year...

(Of course, Tony had been invited too, but…)

“So then, you’re the new Cafe Lady, huh?” Barton said out of nowhere, snapping Peter back to the present. He was looking at Romanov, who was still looking at Peter—or examining him, was what it felt like, a small smile creeping over her features millimeter by millimeter. 

“I told you, I’m retiring. I want a new job.”

Only then did Peter notice she was wearing an apron with the cafe’s logo on it. She flicked some lint from it and stood up, pulling her short white hair into a tight bun. “They love me here. Two work shifts and I’m already assistant manager.”

“Wow. Can I try?” asked Wanda. 

“No,” said Romanov. “You’re not ready for it yet.”

“Cafe work, or undercover work?” 

“Both.”

“Wanda is the team space cadet,” said Barton, kicking Peter lightly on the calf, rubbing the goo of cockroach entrails onto Peter’s suit. “Can’t find her own guitar thirty seconds after she sets it down. Good thing her powers don’t require cool, important items, like webbing. Where did you get this stuff, dude?”

“Hey hey hey. The team space cadet found Spider-Man for you, mind you,” argued Wanda. “And I wasn’t even trying.”

“Felt him out, did you?” said Clint, making gropey fingers at her. 

“I’m getting better all the time,” she smiled smugly. “I could feel his travel anxiety. It was like reading a signature, actually.”

“Wait—you can you read my mind?” gasped Peter, terrified. 

“No. To tell what you’re thinking, I can just look at your face. You want mind-reading, talk to that one,” she gestured at Agent Romanov, who shrugged and pointed a finger gun at him.

“Currently thinking about how hot your suit is, how hungry you are since you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast, and about what Tony is going to say when he finds out you snuck off to Europe on your lonesome, and joined up with the Rogue Avengers about thirty minutes after your plane landed.”

“...Oh my god,” Peter breathed, pulling his mask from his face in pure, astonished awe. “That’s dead-on.”

“Pow,” said Natasha, firing the finger gun as the others laughed. “Okay, Mr. Anonymous Teenager, how about you borrow my cafe’s bathroom to change out of the rather conspicuous travel attire you came here in, and into something a little more discreet, and then I can teach all three of you how to make a decent cup of coffee ?”

“Can I have a chai?”

“I don’t need lessons!”

“That’s...uh, yeah, that sounds perfect,” Peter told Agent Romanov, his heart feeling big and warm. He was here. He was with them. He was  _ on the team. _ And all he had had to do was save Scarlet Witch from a massive cockroach. Or try to save her anyway. 

This couldn’t be real. 

“You guys can call me Peter,” he said abruptly. “Peter Parker. Well,  _ you  _ guys. Natasha already knows. I mean, Natasha Romanov. I mean, Mrs. Romanov. Or, I mean, um,  _ Agent  _ Romanov, you can  _ also _ call me Peter—Peter Parker, But I guess you already know that…”

“Thank heaven above,” said Hawkeye happily, stretching his arms. “Another team dork.”

“He’s not worse than you, Clint,” said Wanda, flicking his arm with a red fingernail. 

“Ouch! Are you kidding me? Did you just hear that intro…?”

The other two meandered into the cafe as Peter just stood and marveled at what had just happened. Hawkeye had made fun of him. Hawkeye himself. Agent Clint Barton, who had been Peter’s first acquisition in his collection of the collectible action figures they gave out in the Burger King kids’ meals, back when he was eleven…

“This is cool,” he muttered. 

“No, this is hot and sweaty. Also, call me Natasha, alright?” said the superspy as she squeezed his shoulder once for good measure, then pulled his mask down over his eyes. “Let’s get you some coffee.”

Holy cow. 

He’d not only smuggled himself here safely, he’d also been accepted into the  _ Avengers.  _

(...What  _ was  _ Tony gonna say, though…?)

He shook the thought away. No time for negativity. It was summer break in Spain, and life was good. Peter was spending six whole weeks with— _ Tony and them.  _ (He didn’t dare refer to the group as the Avengers. For one thing, they weren’t legally allowed to use that name after the Sokovia Accords thing, and for another, it petrified him just to ponder the reality of  _ hanging out with the Avengers _ ). It was a dream come true. They’d be crushing bad guys, exploring new places, collaborating on tech projects for the Avengers, and possibly… just maybe, just perhaps, just  _ possibly  _ they could have one of those massive Friday Night pizza-and-a-movie full-Avengers-team parties that Peter had spent all of middle school pretending he’d one day be invited to go to. 

All he had to do was get Tony Stark to want to officially reform the team first. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May 21st, 3:23PM.

“I mean, you can’t tell  _ anyone… _ ”

Peter groaned as he massaged his calf with his good hand (currently his left) and pressed the ice pack from Agent Romanov against his forehead with his bad one. “Come on. Who would I even tell.”

“Everyone.” She sipped at her sangria. “Or anyone. Why am I even letting you make me divulge this?”

“Just spill!”

At Peter’s command, her lips curled into an involuntary smile, which made her look years younger. Young, innocent, and happy like a butterfly. Nothing like the Natasha Romanov that Peter knew from the tv and the internet. Or from his in-person experience during his first trip to Europe, for that matter. He was trying his best to play it cool, but on the inside Peter was elated to have broken through to the other side of her personality. And it had only cost him his dignity, and the use of four fingers. And possibly a broken collarbone. And definitely a painful strained calf muscle.

“Harold Hogan,” she finally answered. 

Peter dropped his ice pack from his forehead,  his jaw falling all the way to his busted collarbone, too astonished to react with words. Behind them, Wanda spat out a sip’s worth of chai latte (she had wanted a glass of the sangria Agent Romanov has procured from the hotel bar, and as a matter of fact, Peter had wanted to try some sangria too, but Agent Romanov had refused to let them). Wanda was coughing so hard, her face was turning pink, but she managed to splutter out:

“ _ Happy?! _ ”

Agent Romanov looked down, and grinned widely.

Now it was Peter’s turn.

“ _ You _ had a thing with  _ Happy Hogan?! _ ” he gasped.

“ _ Lovebirds _ ,” sang the once-redhead. “Pure romantic bliss, for six and a half months. We were quite compatible.”

“That’s… crazy,” Peter mused, trying to square the idea of the beefy, straight-faced, humorless Happy he knew with… well, with Natasha freaking Romanoff. “That’s totally mind-blowing.”

“Yeah. And you know what,  the conversation wasn’t half bad, either.”

Peter felt a slow, interested blush flood his features as he caught up to the implications of what she was saying. Ten feet behind them, Wanda had dissolved into hopeless snickering on the floor of the hotel lobby. She had her mouth pressed closed, but was laughing so hard and so silently, tears were starting to stream down her face.

Peter was struck by a sudden suspicion. “She’s only laughing because you’re lying to me,” he accused Agent Romanov, pointing at Wanda.

“No, she isn’t,” Natasha answered smoothly, uncrossing her legs and twisting right and left to stretch her back while they waited for word from Sam and Clint about when to head up to the penthouse suite to rescue the hotel staff and visitors from the mentally unstable alien who was currently controlling all access in and out of the five-star hotel in downtown Barcelona. If Same and Clint couldn’t handle it themselves, anyway. “She just can’t wrap her head around the facts.”

“Nor can I,” said Peter, using  _ nor _ because he wanted to sound smart.

“Ha,” she said, laughing at him as she dabbed at the cut on her cheek with hotel napkins. “I know we don’t  _ seem  _ like a storybook match, but since when does anything good in life seem like it came out of a storybook?”

Peter smiled and narrowed his eyes at the same time. Aunt Mae, whose favorite day of the calendar was April 1, had already alerted him to the fact that he, Peter, was one of the most gullible teenagers ever to grace the face of the planet. Multiple times. Always humiliatingly. He was second only to Ned Leeds in selective dumbness. Peter wasn’t about to fall for Agent Romanov’s story just because some small, desperate part of him  _ wanted _ to believe that Natasha was trusting him with the truth. 

“In a weird way, I guess it makes sense…” he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, pretending to take the bait. “You and Happy. Yeah. Ok, I can kinda see it.”

Wanda started laughing harder than ever, which wasn’t a great sign. Agent Romanov drew her pink silk scarf from her neck (she was in Expensive European Socialite Disguise) and threw it at Wanda like it was a balled-up gym sock. 

“He adored me,” Romanov said darkly. “And I him. It made  _ perfect _ sense. But the problem was, I knew after three weeks that I wanted to propose to him.”

“Aha, I knew you were kidding me,” breathed Peter, readjusting his position on the uncomfortable marble floor, and trying not to feel let down.

“I swear to God,” Agent Romanov told him solemnly, lifting her right hand. “Three weeks after I met him. It was way too fast. Although... I know he would have said yes, if I asked. I  _ wanted  _ him to say yes so  _ badly _ , I damn near manipulated him into it. I was... pretty pathetic,” she said, her hand rising up to pull her short, white, right-skewing hair over to the left side of her head as she snorted softly. “In fact, it reminds me of how you are with Tony.”

Peter sat up, pain shooting through his collarbone and hand as he scrunched up his face. 

“ _ What _ !”

“I don’t mean in a romantic way,” said the super-spy mildly, sitting back. “I mean, with you following him around all the time.  _ Lost little puppy looking for a home _ . Happy was just like that.”

“Nah,” said Peter, suddenly more embarrassed than if he  _ had  _ been caught in her stupid practical joke. He shook his head sadly. “That’s not -- I mean, at first, kinda, but Mr. Stark has been super distant lately. Well, and before lately, too. Honestly, I barely ever see him.” Uneasily, he stammered his way through a quick recounting of how Tony had been after their Germany trip, sending drones to check on Peter, coming in person to the Staten Island ferry (that one horrible time), offering him the new suit and the place on the Avengers team after what happened with the Vulture…

And the polite but firm disinterest Tony had displayed toward Peter in the fifteen weeks since then. Er, Mr. Stark. Not Tony.

“...That’s not exactly what Happy told me happened,” said Agent Romanov, her own eyes narrowing as she listened to Peter’s story. “Happy says you call Tony twice a day, morning and night. That Tony’s always staying up waiting for your call. That he can’t sleep until you check in at night.”

Peter’s head shot up and his heart started to race. “Really?”

Slowly, she made a finger gun at him, pointed it at his chest, and shot him through the heart with it. “No.”

He deflated. 

“Oh,” he said in a small voice. 

“Don’t take it personally,” she said diplomatically, giving him back his ice pack. “Tony is like that with nearly everyone. Remote. Little bit robotic. He has to be that way, because… well, he just does.” A strange look lit her features for a split second, and then she shifted into advice-mode. “If you want that to change, you need to give him a good reason to pay attention to you. You can’t make it easy on him, or else he won’t ever take you at face value.”

Peter was confused. 

“..Huh?”

Agent Romanov reached over and flicked him softly on the forehead. “Play hard to get. Reverse psychology. Trust me. I have a magnet inside me pulling me towards lost little puppies. Tony has a magnet inside him pulling him towards what he can’t have. He likes cat-type people, not lonely puppies. Isolated geniuses. Lost souls.”

(She jerked her head back slightly, as if to indicate:  _ take Wanda for example.  _ Wanda was indeed doing a very strong loner-cat-lady impersonation. She had her phone out and a towel to her nosebleed and underneath the towel she looked downright murderously scary, red energy glowing around her frantically tapping fingertips, and her eyes glowing like those of someone you did  _ not _ want to meet in an alleyway late at night). But she looked up when she noticed the lull in their conversation, her face bright.

“You can’t be too careful or precious,” Wanda said in her thickly accented English. “Uncertainty is his magnet. People who aren’t afraid to take a gamble. That’s the only way to win his respect.” 

“So, don’t… be predictable?”

“I mean, you’ve got to give him a  _ reason _ to take an interest,” Natasha took up the thread, drumming perfectly manicured fingertips across her unblemished cheek. “But then you need to step back, hard. Or else spend the rest of your life just behind his shoulder, hoping he’ll eventually glance back to see if you’re still there.”

It was a very depressing thought. And unfortunately, it  _ did  _ resonate. Actually, it was a pretty perfect summary of the last several months of his budding relationship with his childhood idol. And actually, ever since Peter had taken down the Vulture, and proven that he didn’t need Tony to rescue him all the time, Tony had been a little warmer to him. Until Peter had made the mistake of asking him to come over for dinner one random Thursday night. And ever since then, Tony—Mr. Stark— had become twice as distant. 

Peter glanced over at Agent Romanov. Maybe she was right. 

“Please, call me Natasha,” she said gently. 

“Uh, I didn’t say anything.”

“I know, but I could tell you were thinking it.”

He grinned back. Genuinely grinned at her. “Play it cool. Be independent. Got it. Oh dang—“ said Peter, his ice pack slipping again as he realized the flaw in his plan. “I guess I really shouldn’t have followed him here to Spain, in that case.”

For the first time in their conversation, Agent Natasha finally looked like she’d been caught off-guard. 

“Now you’re having  _ me _ on. Tony’s in Thailand this weekend.”

Peter tapped his earpiece and shook his head. “Last I heard, he was going down to the storage locker where they’re keeping the stolen vibranium,” shrugged Peter. “It’s only a few blocks from here. Mr. Stark didn’t tell me, though. I kinda… tapped his comms.”

_ You might end up a pretty good spy after all _ , said Natasha’s surprised, proud twitch of a grin.

“Just to check on him!” Peter protested humbly. “ He was talking to Vision or somebody about it. I didn’t recognize the other voice.”

“Wait, Nat,” Wanda said, sounding alarmed. “If he’s here…” 

“He  _ is _ here,” said Peter, not liking the idea that either one of them thought he was being dishonest. 

“ _ Here _ here?”

Natasha’s jaw had barely, briefly dropped. “Wanda?”

“I’m checking,” answered the girl anxiously, phone already dropped onto her lap, her eyes half closed and her forehead creased as her fingers lifted into claws in the air.

“He  _ is _ here,” Peter repeated, feeling a little worried by their reactions. “Otherwise, why would I be here? I have an English essay to finish this weekend, but when I was listening in on Tony, he mentioned he might not have back-up, so...”

“Oh, kiddo,” said Agent Romanov, standing up. “You have  _ got _ to get to work on fixing that sad puppy-dog face thing.”

_ Why is that such a bad thing, though.  _


	6. 8 minutes after Hawkeye left the Quinjet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May 21st, 3:47pm.

CHAPTER: CLINT

 

The world was black, and he was the creator god. He, Clint Barton, could simply  _ think _ things into being. He could write anything he liked onto that blank slate, so long as he could use his… what was that word his brother had been so in love with, when he was six or seven years old? Oh yeah …  _ imagination _ .

He coughed a good-sized collection of tiny blood puddles into existence on the shiny black floor. Shivered violently, several times. Everything was cold. Everything except his head, which was radiating hot, agonizing pain. He used his imagination:  _ “What’s wrong _ ?” asked Barney, and even in Clint’s imagination, he was in a hurry to leave Clint behind. “ _ Can someone else take care of it? I gotta go — “ _

Barney always has to… 

Wait a second. He didn’t need Barney. All he needed to imagine was…

What was that word again?

… ah yes.

_ Team _

“Nat…” he grumbled heavily, returning in a snap to his 36-year-old body and mind. Childhood had sucked. He’d been helpless, and tiny, and pretty much alone in the universe. But not anymore. Now he had… his Team. Who was always there for him. They’d promised. Always. 

Just like Barney had promised.

“Barney… where are you… Barney… I need you…  _ Barney _ …”

Somewhere nearby, a misty, thrumming sound entered his damaged eardrums. The sound of thrusters stabilizing. Unmistakeable. But it amazed him how he had never before noticed that everything in the entire universe sounded… so…   _ slow _ … 

Footsteps, plodding, and stupidly loud. Each one sent a sharp ray of pain into his migraine. Clint struggled in vain to breathe through the spikes. “ _ Barney _ ,” he yelled instead, except instead of a yell, it was a kind of sad-cat mewl. He tried again, then when there was no immediate response, three or four times more. Still taking so long, what was  _ taking him so long _ .

“...are you, Clint? Make noise, goddammit!”

Aha! That was the problem. He was only using his imaginary voice. His actual voice was far too scratchy and painful.

“... Can’t see a thing in here, Clint, and my suit is offline, so the more you can give me locational clues, the better… Just tell me if I’m getting warmer or colder, okay?”

Clint approximated another sad meowing sound, again. Again. His ribs were spiking. His back was — unspeakable. His head throbbed worse and worse each time he tried to actually process whatever Stark was saying. It was too much. It was actually going to kill him. Cause of death: Avenger-induced headache. Ha ha. Probably not the first one, or the last. He curled in further on himself, laughed silently, and waited to die.

“Make noise, Clint!” barked that annoying metallic voice. 

Clint didn’t want to comply, but he groaned. It hurt, but he groaned. Team sucked, actually, now that he thought about it. He didn’t want any of the  _ Avengers _ ; didn’t want to face another day of frustration and fear and loserdom, the token normal guy amid a pantheon of both figurative and literal deities —

He wanted to be the  _ best _ again, not the sixth runner-up. Or eleventh runner-up, or further than that, depending how many teammates were currently on the squad. Whatever the bottommost number was, that was him, Clint Barton.

His brother Barney Barton had  _ always _ made him feel like the top of the top, the cream of the crop; Barney had made the world go round.... 

“ _ Barney… _ ” he whispered again. 

…There was another far-too-long wait, and some shuffling sounds that nearly put Clint to sleep and then all the sudden human contact was finally re-established. Hands on his shoulder-blades, his back.

“Barney,” breathed Clint with relief. 

“Do I look like a big purple dinosaur to you? You know what, don’t answer that.”

Clint groaned. He’d put his ravaged, burning lungs through hell for  _ this? _

“Alright, you big baby, I’m here,” said Stark, his faceplate flipped up for a split second before replacing itself over his head. “What did you do to yourself this time? Did the mean enemy torpedo give you an owwie?”

“Shuuut uuup…” Clint slurred, trying to roll over, into the embrace of the intravenous pain killer that the Iron Man suit had just injected into his body. He was suddenly ecstatically happy with himself. It had worked. He had done it. He had made an appointment, created a doctor, and finally, the doctor was in!

“Doctor Stark,” he groaned. “Hi, Doctor. Ha ha.”

“Stop flopping around making unfunny jokes,” snapped Stark. “Or just -- arg, stop it, Clint, you damn idiot. Let the medical professional decide if it’s safe for you to move, k?.”

Clint, whose moods were swinging wildly with the introduction of the painkiller,  now just wanted out of this miserable collapsed tunnel, not that there was really another kind of collapsed tunnel. After a long silence on Stark’s end, he grunted, “Well, is it? Save to move?”

There was a pause full of hurried, anxious tinkering, and then a burst of brilliant white light as Stark’s scanners came to life.

“No,” said Stark, with his usual tact, and a smidgen of a smile. “Hi back, by the way.”

After a full thirty hours of labor, Clint gave birth to a bright smile in return. It felt like thirty hours anyway. “Hi. How we doin’ up there?”

“The usual, as far as I can tell,” said Stark. “Thunder God is giving it the old college try, but —”

“Thunder God my ass!” grunted Clint with a sudden burst of vehemence, his chest constricting with anger and pain on the name. He started to cough, and once again, blood specks went flecking in every direction. “Why the hell did Thor decide to detonate that damn torpedo at the exact same goddamn time that I was in this tunnel, I ask you? Was he  _ trying _ to blow me up?”

“That son-of-a-bitch!” Tony cursed instead of answering, paying all his attention to his scanners but still sending banter Clint’s way. “ _ Asgardian Academy for the Elite and Gifted  _ my ass. I seriously doubt they ever let him anywhere near the campus, let alone allowed him to matriculate and graduate.”

“Heh!”

“We should ask Loki.”

“Heh! No!”

They were back to their old banter, lickety-split. Not that  _ heh  _ and  _ no  _ were much for Stark to go on, but Clint’s lack of rhetorical flourish it didn’t seem to be slowing Tony down.

“I’m just saying, have  _ you  _ seen a diploma? No. That guy is coasting by on kingly reputation alone. Dummy probably never even finished Asgard High Schoo-oh, what the  _ hell _ , is this a punctured lung, Clint?  _ Cool _ .  _ Great.  _ What a day.”

“I try,” said Clint weakly.

“I  _ know _ you do; that’s exactly why I eternally hate you,” murmured Tony, tapping away at the nanotech in his wrist. He was doing —  _ something _ , which was what Clint liked most about Tony. It didn’t so much matter what he did, so long as action of some sort was being taken. That way, Clint could convincingly pretend he was going to survive this, that his body would carry him through an impossible amount of pain, for the upteenth time. The pretending was what mattered. It was full well possible Stark wasn’t even  _ here _ , since Clint knew enough about serious head injuries to know hallucination was one of the cards on the table. But whatever it was, exactly, that Real Stark/Hallucination Stark was actually doing, was well beyond Clint’s reasoning capacity at the moment. All he could tell for sure was there was a great deal of poking and prodding from Stark’s hammer-shaped fingers, and a general sense of dismay emanating from Stark’s chirping scanners.

“Whadda I need to do?” Clint managed to ask clearly, studying Stark’s worried expression. Doctors were supposed to tell you what to do when you were sick or injured. Maybe he was misremembering things, and Tony had never been a  _ doctor _ doctor, or even a doctor of any sort, but Clint knew Tony knew enough about bedside manner to know doctors should tell you what you needed to do. He shouldn’t have to teach  _ Tony Stark, _ of all people, how to pretend to be a doctor. But apparently, Stark was too emotionally invested in this case to remember to act like a doctor. Doctor. That was a funny word.  _ Doctor _ .

Stark grimaced at him, and then at the scanner, and again at his communicator, for good measure. He heaved a sigh. “Stop saying  _ doctor _ , Clint.”

“Doctor,” Clint muttered to himself thoughtfully.

Stark started pounding buttons on his cell phone. “Well…my educated guess is that your best shot at a  _ full  _ recovery is to die quickly, then pray that God, or whatever supernatural entity awaits us after death has mercy on you, and restores you to health and returns you to the land of the living in short order, perhaps as some sort of visiting cherub or lower-tier angel or seraphim —”

“ _ Stark _ .” 

“Although, as mentioned earlier, since it’s a real-life God whose to blame for the whole torpedo predicament, maybe we should just put your life in  _ his  _ hands—“

Clint tried to kick him to shut him up, but he pretty much broke his foot on the Iron Man armor when he tried, and much worse than that, he had shifted his torso, thus causing another damn fit of rib-cracking, head-splitting, bone-breaking coughing. 

“I’m kidding,” said Tony tightly. “Kidding. Kidding. Theology aside, just relax and take it easy and you’ll be fine. Promise. We just need Ant-Man to  _ ACTUALLY ANSWER HIS COMMS REQUEST _ , and then you’ll be fine.”

Clint rolled over with a groan.  _ You’ll be fine _ , translated from Stark Bullshit to regular English, was code for  _ you are seriously, seriously fucked up right now. _ He would have felt much less horrible if Stark had stuck with the bitchy, pessimistic sarcasm. The iron-masked man laid a consoling hand on Clint’s shoulder, which filled the sinking feeling in Clint’s stomach with concrete, lead, and neutron star.

He was toast. His life was over.

Clint felt….annoyed about it. He wanted to express how damn sick he already was of Stark’s cold comfort, and how this couldn’t be the end, and how there were so many things he really needed to know, things Barney needed to know, things Clint should have learned, should have told all of them, and now there would be no time — 

Damnit! There were so many things he should have said to his teammates, his Avengers squad, things he should have explained to them in case he died, especially to Thor, that idiot, and wasn’t it just dandy that now Clint would never have that chance, seeing as Thor or some alien or other but most likely it had to have been Thor had gone and launched a thunder torpedo straight into Clint’s brain… and seeing as how Thor no doubt hated Clint now, after the nasty bout of mind control he had just been through…which had led to Thor’s brother… no, wait — that had been before, ages before; that stuff with Loki…

His head was  _ all kinds of messed up _ right now _.  _

“Ugh,” he finally managed as an encapsulation of his complex labyrinth of internal feelings, barely. 

“Don’t talk, Barton,” said Stark.

Well, ok. It hurt to speak. It hurt to breathe. He was going to die. There was no point crying over it, but the thought still made the tears spring up in his eyes. It was either the thought, or the immense pain flaring through his every nerve, getting worse and worse with every passing second. How on earth was this fair, at all? He had so much more life he wanted to live. 

This  _ sucked _ .

To his credit, Stark sensed some of this mental trauma. His grip on Clint’s shoulder tightened slightly, which only made Clint  _ much _ more aware of the non-mental trauma he was experiencing. 

“Come on, Barton,” Tony said, still in his god-awful, upbeat, false-hope-inducing, incredibly-shitty-actor voice of doctorly reassurance. “Buck up. You’ll be fine; it’s going to be —”

“ _ Present! _ ” crackled a welcome but far-too-loud voice from the speaker on the communicator.

“Wow, and on only the ninth try,” replied Stark.

“ _ We’ve been a wee bit, ah, busy, up here, what with the alien invasion and everything— _ ”

“Did you just say _wee bit--_ ” Stark had to break off, because his face was turning red with anger. It took him longer to roll his eyes then it took Clint to draw in a breath. Which was to say, both acts took a good deal longer than their typical regulation limits. 

Then the conversation took a turn for the rapidfire:

“Look, I seriously doubt they’re aliens.”

“ _ No! They are! They’re sparkly and full of--very invasive tentacles-- _ ”

“Spare me the bullshit, and go get someone who will get us out of here, Mr. Lang.” 

“ _ Right, yeah, soon as I get the last of the tentacles out from under my fingernails—  _ ”

“SOONER,” interrupted Stark. 

“ _ I’m just — get the — just give me a — _ ”

“Can you pass me to Natasha?”

“ _ Uh, nope, haven’t seen-- _ ”

_ “ _ Where the hell is Barnes?” demanded Tony. “Or Sam? Hello? I need someone on comms who isn’t  _ completely fucking useless. _ ”

_ “...That’s so... nice! And profane! What a --” _

_ “ _ Wanda?! Anyone. Literally anyone else.”

_ “Nice, unsweary thing to say. Especially to a friend, a very busy friend.” _

“So help me, Scott, where the f—“ Tony broke off and bit his tongue. “Where in the  _ world _ is Captain Rogers right now?”

_ “Huh? Oh, yeah, Cap is here with me. Well, in a way. Physically, he’s still here, but mentally, he’s ...well, I think his mind is still somewhere inside the alien brain, most likely, but don’t you fret over him, I got this. I got this! Actually, in a weird way, I think he actually looks better with tentacles instead hair — _ ”

Stark was about to lose it. “Lang, shut up and get to the control board, now!”

“ _ Say please, you ill-mannered—” _

Suddenly, a stream of Natasha-flavored Russian came through the line.

“I have Barton,” interrupted Tony. “But he’s in a bad way. Needs surgery  _ now. _ ”

No response from Nat… 

“ _ Alright, understood, but it — Gosh darn— nurgh! I’m trying, I’m trying, but this place is TEEMING with these ugly gnarled motherfreaking aliens, and I have to wade through — _ ”

“Well, wade faster,” Stark blurted into the communicator, then added an almost-apologetic, “please.”

_ “Believe me, I’m trying, but it’s not like I have a shortcut available _ —”

“Are you tiny?”

There was a pause… and then a high-pitched, chirping “ _ Yeah!” _

Clint couldn’t help but laugh, painfully, at Iron Man’s deepening scowl. Tony was losing his shit, and not slowly. “Then get big and  _ get over there!  _ Is Steve any closer?”

“ _ He, ugh, yeah, but like I said he’s in the middle of being mind-controlled and he can’t exactly see straight at the moment! I’ve got you though. Just give me a sec— _ ”

“I don’t have that kind of time,” Stark responded. “Give me to Rogers. Throw the communicator at his gosh-darn head if you have to.”

“ _ Um _ .. _ in that case, Godspeed _ !” said Scott.

There was a thud-sound, and then a lengthened crackle, long enough for Clint to inch his arm closer to his reeling head. At first he had intended to cushion his head with his arm, but when Stark saw what he was up to, he shifted closer so Clint could rest his head on Stark’s iron knee. It was desperate times, so Clint accepted without hesitation. His lungs were closing for business. His back was already long gone. Might as well be comfortable while he died in agony.

“Steve, Steve, Steve…” Tony was saying into the communicator. “God  _ dammit _ , Cap. This is not the time to succumb to an alien-induced fugue state. Think of the national anthem. Lincoln Memorial. Veterans Day. FDR. Good, happy thoughts.  _ Pick up the damn communicator and come get us out of this damn tunnel _ . For the love of god, Rogers, snap out of it—”

The pain had begun to swell like a tsunami. Clint’s hand had crept up to his mouth. He fought for a moment, then abandoned all pretense at retaining dignity and shoved his knuckles in between his teeth. Biting down as hard as he could caused his hand to become a focal point for the general pain everywhere else in his body. It was  _ barely _ a fix, barely.

Stark saw what he was up to, unfortunately. He took Clint’s hand and clenched it inside his own hand. “Look, Clint, I can’t do anything for you here, but I promise you’ll be fine once I get you to safety—”

“...Nurgh,” Clint argued back, calling bullshit. 

Stark glared at him, then at the ceiling, presumably in the direction of the quinjet. 

“Natasha, if you’re still listening, I know it’s chaos up there, but you have  _ got _ to get us out, NOW. Whatever is in your brain, get it out and get back to work —”

 “ _ Niet, _ ” answered a voice like Natasha’s, but it was saturated in evil _. “Natasha is unimportant. The only thing that matters is The One— _ ”

“I don’t need The  _ One _ , I need Natasha Romanoff, you stupid alien son of a bitch!” screamed Tony into the communicator. “Get out of her head, get off our planet, and get back to your own damn habitat already, wherever the fuck that might be, or you’re gonna meet the wrath of the Destroyer of Chitauri. I swear to God. Look me up.”

There was a long, pronounced silence on the other end. 

Tony’s face tightened, then tightened further, then ever so slowly got slightly less red and splotchy. He clenched Clint’s fingers in one hand, and spun one of Clint’s spare arrows with the other, turning it over and over like it would turn back time if he spun it through his fingers enough. 

Nat still didn’t answer.

Oh well. They would at least have Clint’s body intact. Or mostly intact. So that was good. They could have a funeral. Grieve, move on. Like normal — that was how it went for normal folk, though it had never happened that way for Clint; every time he had ever lost someone, it left a ragged, evil wound on his heart, one he went to bed with every night and woke up with every morning — and God, how he prayed Stark wouldn’t have to feel that about him, or Natasha, or Steve, or Bruce, or — or god, oh god, not Wanda — 

“ _ Mr. Stark?” _ asked a new voice.

“Peter?”

Clint tried to sit up. Tony forced him back down. Dude. If Peter was-- 

“ _ Thank goodness you guys are okay!” _

“I mean, that’s a strong claim. I’d love to have evidence to back it up, but Hawkeye is in serious trouble and we’ve been sitting in this tunnel for over twenty-three minutes without medical assiss--”

“ _ I’m bringing the assistance to you, okay? _ ”

“Excuse me?”

“ _ We’re locked onto your location, _ ” said Peter, sounding thrilled by his use of Avengery jargon. “ _ I’m flying the helicopter, and Wanda is helping Natasha and Steve, I mean, um, Agent Rogers and Captain Romanov, and Doctor Strange says he’s already prepped for surgery-- _ ” 

“I’m sorry, can we take it right back to  _ you’re flying a helicopter _ ?” said Tony.

“I taught him,” Clint mumbled as Peter yelled, “ _ Don’t worry, Hawkeye taught me how _ !”

“What. The. Fuck.”

“I know, right!?”

“Peter, gotta warn ya, watch out for the fake-out version of Iron Man--”

“ _ Already took care of it, sir! _ ”

Clint felt a small surge of pride. Peter sounded much less frightened than before, back when they’d thought Tony was…

Well, good. Back to normal. Things were going back to normal. Peter would be here soon, and Stark would bitch him out on Clint’s behalf, and once the Strange Nurse got here, whoever she was, she would undoubtedly have the actually good, effective drugs in her triage kit, not these crap ones Tony liked to use, and maybe she’d have nice soft hands instead of iron fingers. 

Everyone on the team was more or less okay, even the ones with aliens in their brains. Normal. Good. Great, even. 

“Is it cool if I black out now?” asked Clint, just before he realized it wasn’t the type of thing you had to ask permission for. 

“No,” said Stark, just to be petty. Clint was pretty sure. 

“Cool,” he sighed, and Clint Barton, creator god extraordinaire, finally fizzled out of existence, along with the rest of the universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda sorta upset with the funereal aspects Avengers: Endgame? Feeling listless and depressed over the loss of major characters from the OG Avengers? Got the urge to write a fanon-heavy do-over of multiple movie events, but not quite sure if you have comma splices or chronological inaccuracies? LET ME BE YOUR BETA READER. Or at least drop a comment in the box. I am in VERY desperate need of fic recs.


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